Fiona Collins is network coordinator of the DCU Changemaker Schools Network, she made contact with me after hearing about the podcast and when we first spoke on the phone I was buzzing after talking to her, she is a right up my street. Passionate, informed and knows a hell of a lot about change. She began as a teacher and then as head of an inner city Dublin school which was experiencing a host of difficulties. Many of the students struggled with literacy and there was aggression and conflict in the playground but Fiona saw in the boys who came into her office that there was real emotion, just a lack of emotional literacy. She began by bringing in programmes which you’ll hear about, to give them the skills, she and her team broke down the hierarchy of power and empowered the children. Over 10 years there was a complete culture shift in the school and they were nominated as a Changemaker School. Ashoka an NGO were running the Changemaker School initiative at the time, all with the aim of driving social change, they eventually moved on and it was taken over by DCU and Fiona moved too to hold her current title.

You might never had heard to Changemaker Schools, I hadn’t until I got Fiona’s email and you might think why is this important, particularly if you’re not a parent. Wait until you hear what Fiona has to say, there is so much to be learnt from our education system, it is literally shaping the future generations – today we talk about what needs to change, why empathy, creativity, leadership and teamwork are essential and how the old system is no longer serving us. There is a global motivation for change and we need to move with this momentum. Fiona believes that we should begin empowering kids from primary school up – why wait until they are teens before we think they have a conscience and a voice?

I was so inspired by this conversation, Fiona has a brilliant way of taking on the big issues of our world and bringing them down to local level to show that real change is incremental and we can all be a part of it.

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